A public float of the Government’s $29 billion stake in Telstra
could be scrapped if the share price is too low next year, with the
shares instead pushed into the planned Future Fund, reports The SMH.

That’s a staggering proposition, says Malcolm Maiden in The Smage, which no fund trustee or funds
manager could happily embrace. The Government promises that the Future Fund will be managed
independently. But saddling it with that much exposure to a single
company ahead of its independence would be the financial equivalent
of a hospital pass. And Michael O’Sullivan, president of the Australian Council of
Superannuation Investors, told The Age that a full transfer of the holding
was “the last thing you would want to do…It would be starting the trustee of the fund with almost both
hands tied behind its back,” he said. “Nobody would ever have a
weighting to one stock as heavy as that.”

BHP Billiton chief Chip Goodyear will deliver a June-year profit
report late on Wednesday that the market expects will confirm an
$8.36 billion earnings bonanza due to the China-led boom in
commodity prices, reports The Age. The result will be a record for corporate Australia, but it’s not expected to last long, with continuing strength in most
commodity prices and production increases forecast to take BHP to
an annual profit of more than $11 billion next year.

And The Fin Review reports that employer groups are pressing the
federal government for tax breaks and administrative help for tens of
thousands of small businesses that may be forced to incorporate under
its planned industrial relations reforms.